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            New York Times, May 11, 2000

    RANDOM HOUSE AND AUDIBLE TO SELL
    DIGITIZED AUDIO BOOKS ON INTERNET

          By DAVID LEONHARDT

            Random House, the nation's top trade publisher
            of popular books, and Audible Inc., an Internet
            audio company, have signed an agreement to begin
            selling digitized audio books online, the
            companies plan to announce today.

            The alliance will create a new imprint, called
            Random House Audible, that will try to convince
            consumers to download from the Web audio
            material, ranging from existing Random House
            books to historical material, like speeches, to
            new, specialized content like business books.
            Listeners would then hear the books through their
            computer or by using a portable device like an
            MP3 player.

            The venture will be the first instance of a
            publisher's selling new audio material through
            the Web, rather than offering existing audio
            books in a digital form as well, said Paul Rush,
            the president of both the Audio Publishers
            Association and Earful of Books, a Dallas-based
            chain of stores that sell books on tape.

            Random House Audible will be able to release
            audio books more quickly -- to respond to a news
            event, for example -- and will probably inspire
            similar moves by other publishers, he added.

            "For our industry, it is a major event," Mr. Rush
            said.

            Jenny Frost, the president of the Random House
            audio publishing group, said that the new imprint
            would focus on material with a narrower audience
            than the company's current list of audio titles.
            That list includes books by John Grisham and
            Danielle Steele and the Harry Potter series by J.
            K. Rowling.

            "Our programming doesn't have to support two
            inches on a shelf in a bookstore anymore," Ms.
            Frost said.

            The new imprint could also serialize books more
            easily than the existing audio division, which is
            Random House's fastest-growing group, Ms. Frost
            said. For example, Random House Audible would not
            have had to wait to release Mr. Grisham's recent
            serialized novel until all of the chapters had
            been published, said Jonathan Korzen, a spokesman
            for Audible.

            Books that sell particularly well over the Web
            may later be sold as tapes and compact discs, Mr.
            Korzen said.

            The companies expect to sell their first
            digitized audio book this summer. The books will
            typically cost about 20 percent less than audio
            books available on tape or CD's, Ms. Frost said.

            The new kind of books will not be as easy to
            listen to as the old versions, however. After
            downloading a book from the Internet, listeners
            will be able to hear it through their desktop
            computer, a hand-held computer run with Microsoft
            software or the Diamond Multimedia Rio MP3
            player.

            Audible will, however, encrypt the audio material
            so that consumers cannot listen to it on a tape
            player, CD player or the most popular brand of
            hand-held computers, 3Com's Palm, Mr. Korzen
            said.

            



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